This is the note I sent to friends in early 2021, kicking off this website
Hello Friends,
I’ve spent a lot of mental energy this past year reflecting on my life to date, where I’m going, and what I’m doing and, while the last decade has been very good to me in terms of my career, I realized I’ve lost track of activities that are deeply meaningful and important to me. Namely: reading, writing, and teaching.
I don’t think it comes as a shock to anyone that I love to learn new things and talk about them.
So, I spent the last part of 2020 trying to reintroduce these activities into my role as a product manager, mostly by researching and writing a 16,000 word product management book. I put that down when I realized that I wanted to focus more on creative writing.
So, for the first time in a long time, I gave myself permission to learn and write about whatever I wanted. Serendipitously, the Vendee Globe kicked off right around the same time. The Vendee is a quadrennial sailboat race that pits solo skippers against each other in a non-stop round-the-world race which takes almost three months to complete.
For fun, I started writing about the Vendee. I wrote about the boats, the skipper, and the drama that has unfolded from November to February. And so, with the race drawing to a close, I’d like to share with you what I have.
I’m using my personal domain, beaublinder.com, to host longform content I’ll be writing on the Vendee and other topics I find interesting. While I don’t know the direction every story will take, I can tell you a few things:
- Each topic will be covered in a series of infrequent posts (once every 3 weeks at most) and total somewhere between 15,000 – 25,000 words
- Topics will vary but will be all non-fiction (I won’t sneak any poetry in there, I swear)
- Whatever I write about, I want it to be interesting, well-researched, and well-written. Most importantly, I want these topics to give you all things to think about, to bring up at parties (whenever those happen again), and to serve as a jumping off point for learning more about something
That’s my plan! If you’re interested, sign up below and I’ll send you the first part of the Vendee article. Not interested? No problem! I’m not looking to add to the noise you receive every week.
